Garry Meier

may be on way

to WCKG gig

March 21, 2007|By Phil Rosenthal

Garry Meier doesn't want to talk until the paperwork's complete, which is understandable given how his last contract negotiation turned out.

Sources close to Meier's talks with CBS Radio's WCKG-FM 105.9 say the two sides are hashing over final details for Meier to return to Chicago radio in the slot between the "Opie & Anthony" syndicated morning show and WCKG's midday program with Stan Lawrence and the Chicago Tribune's Terry Armour.

The move would put Meier, whose career has been in suspended animation since he was unable to come to terms on a 2004 renewal with WLS-AM 890, where he was Roe Conn's afternoon partner for eight years, on the same station as his first ex-partner, Steve Dahl, who pulls the 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. shift on WCKG.

A team for 14 years, they had an impromptu reunion on one of Dahl's remote WCKG broadcasts last summer in which the two set aside the acrimony that had simmered since their 1993 split. Dahl blogged Tuesday he hoped the station and Meier reach a deal so "he can finish out his career at WCKG."

The committee, looking for ways to boost shareholder value since September, is favoring a management-led "self-help" strategy over Zell's plan, which, fueled by an employee stock ownership plan, was seen as threatening to add too much debt and too little equity, according to sources.

But the would-be chairman shrugs off this news, as might be expected of someone who already was said to be worth north of $4 billion before personally pocketing another $1 billion or so in last month's $39 billion deal for Equity Office Properties Trust.

Indeed, the self-set March 31 deadline for the committee to make a decision looms for Tribune Co., parent of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other media properties, as well as of the Chicago Cubs.

PUNCH THE CLOCK: With everyone springing forward for daylight-saving time three weeks early this year, the television networks fell back.

They didn't get their clocks cleaned but, collectively, the major networks were down 16 percent in the targeted 18-to-49 demographic year-to-year for the week that ended Sunday, dragged down by an average of 6 percent fewer viewers in that age group watching prime time than in 2005, according to Nielsen Media Research.

It appears the later sunsets play a role in that downtick, but so too might be spring break with Nielsen now tracking college campus viewing.

Even "American Idol," the most reliable juggernaut in prime time, was off 10 percent from a year ago.

EXECUTIVE ORDERS: Tony Hunter was named the Chicago Tribune's senior vice president of circulation and operations and Owen Youngman the paper's senior vice president of strategy and development Tuesday, a day after vice president of circulation and consumer marketing Tim Ryan was named publisher of Tribune Co. sibling The Baltimore Sun.

Hunter has been vice president of operations at the Chicago Tribune since 2003. Before joining the paper in 1994 he spent 10 years at Schaumburg-based Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Youngman, who began his career at the Tribune in 1971 as a copy boy, has been vice president of development at the paper since 2000. His expanded role means adding the paper's RedEye edition to his responsibilities.

METTLE OF HONOR: NBC News' Richard Engel takes viewers into his everyday life as a correspondent in Iraq over the last four years in an extraordinary hour, "War Zone Diary," set for 9 p.m. Wednesday on MSNBC, repeating at 10 p.m., midnight and 1 a.m.

Engel shares the emotional toll this experience has exacted on him, including the end of his marriage back home, as he surveys the physical damage all around him, some of which is not for the weak stomached.

It's a very personal take, one that he says might just be his "own obituary," as the near misses he goes through attest. "I'm still here because this war is in no way over," he says.